


Empty Chamber

by theskywasblue



Category: Saiyuki, Saiyuki Gaiden
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spy, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gunplay, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-09
Updated: 2010-07-09
Packaged: 2017-10-10 11:35:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's all part of the game...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty Chamber

**Author's Note:**

  * For [macavitykitsune](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=macavitykitsune).



> Originally written for the [7thnight_smut](http://community.livejournal.com/7thnight_smut/) giftfic exchange 2008

When you give a man a gun, you trust him with the whole world, with life and death in a perfect little package. When you give a man a gun, you trust him not to put it to your head as easily as his own.

It was an awful lot of trust to be given by a man he didn't really know.

But that was all part of the game; to pretend to know, to play his cards close to the chest and smile and have no one see the truth in his eyes or pressed in behind his teeth.

"I can get you hundreds of these, easily, untraceable," Tenpou leaned back, put his boots up on the table, raking a hand through the uneven mess of his dark brown hair. He looked too much the gangster in his black coat and biker boots, to the point of ridiculousness. He didn't wear his mask well, didn't have as many years of practice as Nii did; he looked too much like what Nii knew he really was - a well connected, well-read, well-bred young man with far too much time on his hands; a pampered politician's son with delusions of power and influence, a product of an overseas boarding school education and the determined entitlement of the rich.

"Just like these?" Nii picked up the Baby Eagle, turned it over in his hands. It was the real thing, as far as he could tell, not some cheap Russian knockoff.

"You'll be taking them back to Japan, I assume."

Nii made a non-committal noise, "I'll be paying for them here, if that's what you're worried about."

"Oh, I'm not worried," Tenpou offered him a cigarette, but Nii waved it away, instead laying the gun down and walking over to the room's small bar-table. The warm night air blew in through the open veranda doors, carrying with it all the reek of the city: trash and exhaust, the sweat of millions, the rich oil of seasoned meat with the bite of garlic. Nii poured blood-dark red wine into an empty crystal glass and stood with one hip against the edge of the bar, looking out into the night.

"I've heard it said that somewhere in this city you can find anything your heart desires," Tenpou's voice sounded dreamy and a little mocking. The earthy tang of fresh local tobacco in a hand-rolled cigarette touched Nii's nostrils.

"I doubt somehow that it could give me what my heart desires."

Tenpou laughed, "Are you a romantic?"

"A realist," Nii answered, turning away from the window, draining half his glass in a heady gulp, "And this is hardly about heart's desires is it?"

"Hardly," Tenpou agreed with a curt nod, holding out his silver cigarette case for Nii, who finally accepted one of the hand-rolled creations, tucking it behind his ear, "So then, does it all meet with your satisfaction?"

"This example does." Nii sat again, still caught off-guard by the plush velvet sofa and the way it sank underneath him, "But I'd like to see a few more examples, so I can make an educated choice."

Tenpou nodded, seeming completely understanding. Did he know, Nii wondered, did he even suspect that it was only an excuse to get a little bit closer, to find a few more details?

"There are other options, of course. I could have a few more brought in - perhaps at the end of the week?"

Nii rolled his options over in his mind, considering. He would have to report fairly soon; not that he had anything _to_ report. "I'd like to see more - a wise consumer doesn't buy the first one off the production line after all. How do I know that this isn't the best you have to offer?"

Tenpou's brow went up, "What happened to good faith?"

"I've never knelt before an altar in my life."

Tenpou's lips curled around his cigarette, "Well then, how am I to know you have the cash to pay for all this? After all, you walk in here looking like some scattered tourist..."

Nii glanced down at himself - the wrinkled dress shirt, dark with sweat stains, pants caked with dust nearly from the knee down. He knew his black hair hung lank and unwashed. It wasn't a pretty sight in the least. He rubbed a hand across his forehead and laughed, setting his wineglass down and fishing deep into his pocket.  
"This - I think - is the 'faith' you're looking for."

Tenpou caught the tight-rolled wad of bills without so much as blinking, and weighed it in his palm, "Good enough. You can take the gun if you like, since we're trading pleasantries."

Nii drained his glass, stood, and tucked the gun into the back of his pants. With his shirt un-tucked it would be decently hidden, at least when he ventured out into the night. "I'll expect to hear from you soon then."

Tenpou nodded, just once, slow and graceful, like a king at court, "Of course."

* * *

Tenpou watched Nii leave with a sort of vague amusement, eyes heavy-lidded behind his glasses, finally drifting closed in the moment of silence after the door-latch clicked into place.

"He's playin' you, ya know."

Tenpou hummed in response, without opening his eyes, "You think so?"

Though he hadn't heard Kenren leave the side room, he certainly felt the heat of the other man's body as he leaned over the back of the sofa, reaching for the cigarette case on the table.

"C'mon man, I know you're not stupid. You're sitting right there looking in his eyes. You have to know."

Tenpou shrugged, uncurling the wad of bills and spreading them out across the tabletop. Despite himself, Kenren whistled softly.

"We could - how would you put it - cut and run," Tenpou suggested, "just like this. I mean, it's not much compared to what we _could_ have..."

The loud metallic snick of Kenren's lighter inches from his ear almost made him flinch, and he could feel the heat of the flame against his cheek before it snapped closed and Kenren exhaled a long cloud of rich smoke.

"Now you're trying to play _me_, Tenpou. Trouble is, I know you better. I know the money doesn't mean shit to you. And I didn't come out to the ass-end of nowhere with you to end up in some desert prison."

Tenpou laughed, standing so quickly that Kenren all but had to jump back to avoid having his lower jaw knocked up into his head, "Please Kenren - would I let such a thing happen?"

"You would if you thought it was funny."

"Oh ye of little faith," Tenpou moved to the bar, pouring himself a glass of brandy before turning back to face the other man. "What would you have me do, back out, I suppose?"

"Fuck yes!" Kenren vaulted over the back of the sofa and sat, gaping, "I can't believe you would think of doing anything else."

Tenpou hummed thoughtfully and leaned back against the bar. He had known, or at least suspected that Nii Jianyi was far more than just another man looking for high-quality weapons. Granted, it was hard to get a read on the man for more than a few minutes at a time. He was discomfortingly like the shifting desert sands, never the same for more than a heartbeat.

It was, frankly, intriguing and frustrating at once, like trying to put together a puzzle with half the pieces missing.

But it wasn't the puzzle he wanted, the final product. He just liked the challenge of trying to put it all together. Once the picture became whole it wasn't any fun anymore.  
"Don't worry about him Kenren," Tenpou tipped his glass back, letting the alcohol flow hot and smooth down the back of his throat and settle in his stomach like the promise of pleasure, "it's my game to play, not yours."

* * *

The night was warm, with a nearly full moon hanging low and smoky-yellow overhead.  
Even well after midnight, the city was still full of people loitering, chattering and shopping. With the days so suffocating hot, the drop in temperature that the night promised, however small and brief, drew people out of hiding to live their lives. Most gave Nii a wide berth as he walked, hunch-shouldered, following side-streets and alley-ways in an endlessly winding pattern - he could never take the same route twice, of course; luckily the configuration of the city provided an almost infinite number of possibilities for him to lose himself even more than he had already.

Compared to the almost self-conscious opulence of Tenpou's accommodations, Nii's room in the boarding house, with its single moth-eaten velvet chair, scarred end table, and double bed with a mattress dating back to before the cold war, surrounded by mosquito netting, seemed abject squalor. Nii elbowed open the stubborn door that led out to a shared courtyard, watching with vague curiosity for a moment a woman's silhouette behind a sheer curtain across the way, then set the gun on the end table and stripped, kicking his clothes into a hasty pile before stretching out on the bed to watch the perpetually slow ceiling fan overhead make its feeble attempt at stirring the air.

_He knows_, the dark part of Nii's mind - and there were a lot of dark parts, especially these days, and quite a few that were just plain empty - whispered, _he knows you're playing him. Did you see his eyes? He knows you're not who you say you are._

Whether that was true, or just an excuse concocted by his own desperation, Nii couldn't be sure. He tired to remember when it was that he had lost his taste for the assignment, and why. At one point he had loved the game, the freedom of it, the knowledge that it was only on rare occasions that he had to be himself, and even then it was as much for show as any alternate identity he assumed.

_That's the problem with you Ken'yuu - you wear so many masks, I can't even hope to find your real face underneath them all._

* * *

"You can have it back," Nii passed the gun over the table. No one in the café even seemed to notice it was there. Everyone knew enough to mind their own business. Tenpou looked at it disinterestedly.

"This is all non-refundable, I hope you realize."

"I'm not looking for a refund."

He had laid awake all the night before, thinking that it - the whole cluster-fuck of his assignment - was very probably over. He was sure Tenpou was on to him, might have been on to him since the start; which wouldn't have been his fault, of course, but the fault of the higher-ups, who had never met Tenpou in person, had never realized just how deep those emerald eyes could look into a person's soul. Nii knew he would never get Tenpou to give away enough to damn himself. Even if he did, there was always the messy business of the brunet's well-connected family. No amount of evidence could override that.

"We had an agreement though, as you recall."

"It doesn't matter. This game is over for me."

Tenpou said something in response that he couldn't be bothered to listen to. He was too busy thinking, trying to decide what he should do, before finally deciding that it was all fucked. And what could they do to him anyway? They had trained him to blend in, to disappear, and he could turn that back on them, as easily as breathing.

He could become the ghost they always wanted him to be. Play a new game, one more challenging, but one that he at least had a chance to win. Or maybe, finally, stop playing.  
"How much do you think you know about me?"

Tenpou, who had been in the middle of saying something, probably about good faith, contracts and economics, stopped so abruptly that Nii could actually see the muscles instinctually rippling and tensing under his shirt, as if bracing for impact.

"Do you want some kind of philosophical answer to that? No man is an island - yet we can only know what lies inside our own minds, that sort of thing?"

Nii rolled his eyes, pushing his coffee aside to clear room on the table, reaching into his back pocket and passing his ID - the last part of his real self wrapped in leather and plastic, into Tenpou's hand. Tenpou looked at it for two heartbeats and handed it back, smiling.

"Interpol? Already I can feel Kenren burning with jealousy," he leaned back, put his feet up on the table. For the first time someone looked at them, but nothing was said.

"Is that what you wanted?" Nii pressed, not exactly sure why he wanted to know, except that he needed to walk away with something more than the taste of defeat in the back of his throat, "the recognition?"

"I want exactly what I'm getting," Tenpou's smile never wavered, "I get to see the look on the faces of men like you when you realize I want nothing at all. That's why you'll never catch me, even sitting right here across the table. The same reason they never catch serial killers. No motive."

"Serial killers are insane," Nii reminded him.

"All men are insane, to one degree or another."

He was right, all too right. Nii knew the darkness of his own mind, and how many people in his line of work simply vanished, consumed by what they called passion, but was really only a desperate desire to challenge and be challenged. He could have been insane for a very, very long time and never known it - or really cared.

_Underneath all your masks Ken'yuu - where are you? If you take them all off, will there be anything underneath?_

Nii got up and left the table. He expected the streets to welcome him, swallow him up like they had so many times before, but against his will he hesitated.

"Seems a shame to leave things unfinished," Tenpou bumped his shoulder deliberately. Others filtering out of the café moved around them, no one said anything about the fact that they were blocking the door. When Nii turned his head, he could see the gun tucked inside his open jacket.

"Yeah...it does."  
Tenpou took out a cigarette, offering Nii one, probably out of pure habit. Nii took it and - what the hell, why not - lit it right away. The smoke was beautiful, bitter-sweet, not the least bit harsh like the processed crap he was used to buying in the stores. He held it in his lungs and ran over all the things he might say in his head, striking out each one in turn. Finally, he turned and walked away; Tenpou fell into step beside him and didn't say a word. Part of Nii wanted to ask just what the hell he thought he was doing; though whether the question applied to Tenpou, or to himself he couldn't be sure. In the end it didn't much matter. They both knew exactly what would happen, and Nii had no desire to try and stop it.

* * *

The gun sat on the bedside table, next to the bottle of lubricant.

Slow, deliberate, Tenpou kissed and licked and bit his way along the tack of Nii's spine, feeling the man's legs slide down and apart on the cotton-covered mattress, reaching between them to palm his thick, eager length and feel his body shudder uncontrollably. Rings of muscle rippled around Tenpou's fingers and he pushed in as deep as he could, chasing the intense heat and the wild, rabbit-like flutter of the man's heartbeat. He stretched them apart and sank his teeth into Nii's shoulder, releasing Nii's cock and tangling his hand in raven locks instead, pulling Nii's head to one side to open the pale, sweat-damp length of the man's neck to his teeth.

"Oh _fuck_..." Nii dropped forward, supporting his forehead on his sweat-slicked arms, forcing his hips back against Tenpou's fingers. Tenpou laughed, rubbing himself hard against Nii's thigh, then pulled his fingers out and plunged his cock in, hard and fast and in all the way so that flesh slapped together. Nii moaned, hips slipping forward bit by bit, as if desperate to rub his aching flesh on the coarse sheets. He shuddered with relief when Tenpou palmed him, rocking back to meet each thrust with a soft, aching cry. Tenpou's hand slid over Nii's sweat-slick, pale back, blunt nails leaving soft red tracks that had to sting from the beads of sweat rolling along them. He must have liked it, though, because his balls drew tight, his cock jumped and the sound that escaped his throat sounded like a plea.

It might have been a moment of complete madness - but who wouldn't be driven crazy, with burning rings of muscle tightening rhythmically around his cock, with slick heat encasing him, pulling him in? - Tenpou reached to the bedside table with a shaking hand, grabbed up the gun and laid its cool steel against Nii's side, trailed the chill barrel along his spine and nestled it into the back of his neck.

Nii's whole body went rigid, snapping tight like a bowstring and his come poured through Tenpou's fingers, soaking the sheets.

It was just as well the gun wasn't loaded.

* * *

Nii leaned up on one elbow, sweat cooling on his skin, and watched Tenpou's back as he dressed. The gun lay on the bed next to him and he brushed it aside, disinterested. It wasn't loaded; never had been. But for a moment he had almost believed it, and the illusion was everything.

A slow, warm wind stirred the curtains on the doors leading out to the courtyard as the fan churned lazily above the bed and a woman's laughter echoed from somewhere unseen.

"How long have you been tracking me, really; before you came up to me in that bar last year?"

"Three years," Nii reached down, helpfully tossed Tenpou one of his boots, "and I spent eight months before that learning everything there was to know about you from the files."

"And what _did_ you learn?" Tenpou turned half around, but didn't look at him. It looked like he was counting his buttons as he worked them up, _one, two, three_; like he was afraid he might miss or lose one while he wasn't paying attention.

"Fuck all, honestly."

Dressed, Tenpou opened the door, stepped out into the hall, "Don't try and find me again."

"Why would I?" Nii turned onto his back, watching the lazy swirl of the ceiling fan, "the game's over."

The door shut with a soft metallic sound as the lock clicked into place. Nii rested his head on one arm, drew up one knee and let his eyes close, the fingers of his other hand making slow spiral patterns across his stomach.

"Didn't even ask who won."

-End-


End file.
